More than 100 local officials asked Gov. John Kasich for the authority to ban or regulate oil and gas drilling after several courts said they had little power.

A recent Ohio Supreme Court decision said state officials, not local ones, have the power to approve the location of wells used in the oil and gas drilling process called fracking. The case started when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources allowed a company to drill in an Akron suburb without city officials' approval.

Since then, Cuyahoga County and Athens County courts ruled that charter cities, like Broadview Heights and Athens, don't have the power to ban fracking. That could be a problem for cities like Mansfield, where officials have said their charter status protects them from the state supreme court decision.

City and county leaders say they should have more control over potentially dangerous chemicals introduced into their air and water. They asked Kasich in a letter to "stand up for the right of all communities to determine whether, where, and how this dirty drilling is conducted within their own borders."

"Fracking brings local harm, so it should be subject to local control," said Sarah Frost, outreach coordinator for Environment Ohio, a non-profit environmental group that collected signatures. She cited a house explosion in Geauga County, earthquakes in Youngstown and a fire in Monroe County as examples of the dangers associated with fracking.

But don't expect much change. Kasich spokesman Jim Lynch said Ohio has some of the strongest and most comprehensive fracking regulations in the country. The Ohio Oil and Gas Association would rather be regulated by the state, too.

"We strongly believe that oil and gas development is a matter of statewide interest and should be managed by professionals with the expertise to adequately regulate and oversee the industry," executive vice president Shawn Bennett said in a statement after the Ohio Supreme Court decision.

The group of local officials proposed no statewide legislation to give them authority over fracking. Instead, Wyoming city council member James O'Reilly proposed several workarounds, including zoning laws to prohibit injection wells, stricter weight limits on trucks to prevent oil and gas companies from transporting waste and noise ordinances to restrict sound during the night.

"If the effect is they can't drill and they can't dump, then so much the better," said O'Reilly, who works as a University of Cincinnati law professor.